


the wind is knocking at the door.

by outpastthemoat



Category: The Dalemark Quartet - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Post-Crown of Dalemark, sentimental drivel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 10:29:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15683607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: Post-Crown of Dalemark fix-it fic.





	the wind is knocking at the door.

The wind is knocking at the door.

 

For @magenpies

 

The small domed stone room looked much the same as Mitt remembered it.  The stone benches wrapping around the room, the greenstone pillars twisting up the walls, the small flat table with a niche just above it, with an image carved out of stone: An old man lifting up a mountain.  What was different, he thought ruefully, was the small stone table. It was empty. Mitt ducked under the stone archway and stepped inside, and then stopped awkwardly. 

 

The thin figure standing in from of the empty stone altar turned around.  “Oh, it’s you,” Hildy said. She was glaring at him. “Not now!” Mitt thought she looked paler and stormier than usual in her heavy black woolen gowns with the narrow green and white and blue stripes down her sleeves.  Mitt had gathered at the graduation ceremony earlier that the bands were supposed to indicate special honors and awards that Hildy had achieved in her time at Garsdale, but he could not for the life of him remember what they were.  “What do you want?” she snapped.

 

“Er,” said Mitt.  “To say congratulations, I suppose.”  Hildy just stared at him, a thin frown between her eyes.  “Congratulations,” Mitt added hastily. 

 

“You think I believe that’s all you came here for?” Hildy said coldly.  “Out with it, Mitt. You look just like father when he wants something.”

 

“How’s that?” demanded Mitt, needled.  “What do I look like, then?” 

 

“Apprehensive,” said Hildy sourly.  “Just like father. What are you doing here, Mitt?”

 

“Well,” said Mitt cautiously, “I suppose I came to ask you to come back to Kernsburgh with me and Navis.  To be my law-woman, back home.” This was not going at all like he had been picturing all the way from Kernsburgh.  He had supposed, though he was rather ashamed to admit it, that Hildy would be glad to see him now that he was something other than a fisherman from the Flate.  He realized with a jolt that all these years he had been thinking that Hildy had stopped liking him because she was a snob, and that when his fortune had turned, she would look at him favorably again.  He had gleefully been planning his revenge of sorts, the entire trip. Let her fawn over him all the way home, and then snub her once they were back in the capital. See how she liked being dropped like an old hat for once.  But this wasn’t going at all according to his daydream. 

 

“I thought it might be something like that,” said Hildy.  “Well, you’re out of luck. I already have plans. I’m going to take a holiday in Ansdale.  Then I have a post already waiting for me in North Dales.”

 

Mitt gathered himself uncertainty.  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist,” he said.  

 

“And I’m supposed to meekly say, Yes, Great Amil, and ride back to that hole in the ground you  and father are pretending is a city, is that right?” said Hildy cuttingly. “Well, I won’t go. You can’t make me.”

 

Flaming Ammet! Mitt thought.  And here I thought I was going to be getting my revenge, and it seems she’s getting hers.  But what did I do? He was beginning to get damp under his arms. Well, that was Hildy for you.  

 

“Well, yes!” Mitt floundered.  He squirmed uncomfortably. But he tried again anyway.  “I  _ am _ your king.”  But that didn’t not seem to be the right track.  Hildy was glaring at him. Mitt hasily changed gears.  “So yes. That’s what I’m asking. I hoped you’d say yes.”  

 

He cleared his throat.  “Look here, Hildy,” he said earnestly.  “Won’t you come with me? I could sure use you there.  Just to tell me what to do about important things. I don’t have enough people to do that for me.”  Mitt was surprised to find that he meant it. He could use Hildy to talk to. 

 

“Oh, I’m sure you could find a use for me,” Hildy said furiously.  “You and father and everyone else, that’s all you see when you look at me.  Something useful. Well, I won’t have it, Mitt.” And Hildy turned away from Mitt and the altar as if she meant to go.  But she didn’t leave.

 

“Ye gods, you  _ girls! _ ” snapped Mitt.  “You’re impossible to say anything to, Hildy!  You make everything I say come out wrong. We all want you there.  Navis and Ynen. And me. Truth is, Hildy, I, er, missed you,” Mitt finished lamely.  He winced in anticipation. 

 

“Missed  _ me! _ Missed  _ me!  _ I wrote and wrote to you, and hardly got a word in reply!  I went to all the trouble of teaching you to read and you couldn’t be bothered to sit down and write.  I suppose you hardly noticed I was gone!” And then Hildy surprised him completely by bursting stormily into tears.  

 

Mitt felt himself at a great loss.  What I am supposed to do now? he wondered.  He stared at Hildy’s thin shoulders covered in heavy black wool, shaking.  He was beginning to feel ashamed. All this time, he had been nursing his hurt at how Hildy had snubbed him.  He could see now, though he hadn’t at the time, that he must have done something himself to have hurt Hildy quite badly.  And he had carried that tender, sore hurt around with him for years, only thinking of Hildy’s scorn and not knowing what to make of it.  He’d believed Hildy to have done him wrong, and now here was Hildy, saying the same about him. Ammet take it, what a mess. It seemed to Mitt that keeping friends was hardly worth it, if you had to go to this much trouble.

 

But he had come all the way to Gardale.  It must not have all been for revenge. Somewhere below the hurt he must have truly wanted to make amends.  Mitt cleared his throat self-consciously and put his large-knuckled hand on Hildy’s thin shoulder. Rather to his surprise, she didn’t push it away.

 

“Hildy, I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly.  “That I let you down that way. But here I thought all this time you didn’t want to write to  _ me. _ ”

 

“What?”  Hildy sort of turned and looked at him then.  

 

“Well, there was that awful letter,” Mitt said frankly.  “I couldn’t make heads or tails or it. And it hurt me, bad.  Couldn’t think what I’d done to deserve it. You were my first friend.”  

 

She glared at him.  “If you must know,” she said slowly, “you and father and Ynen just seemed to fit.  And not me. It was horrible.” A tear rolled down her pale cheek, but Hildy didn’t seem to notice.  “Imagine, if you can. Father took an interest in you. But not me. He let them send me off to this place and when he came back, it wasn’t for me at all - it was because of _ you _ .  

 

“Oh, but you can’t mean that, Hildy,” Mitt protested.  “It’s just not true.” 

 

“Yes it is!” bawled Hildy.  “Father thinks you’re interesting.  And Ynen likes you best, even though I’m the one who gave him his boat! And father looks at me, and he is just tired.”  Mitt did not know what to say to all this. It could not help matters if he said truthfully that Hildy often made him feel tired, too.  

 

“But Hildy,” he said finally.  “I thought that after all that we’d been though, well, you know - coming north.  I’d been thinking that we belonged together.”

 

Hildy snorted furiously.  “As if! I’d never marry you, Great Amil or not.”

 

“Not like that,” said Mitt, perturbed.  “But like friends, maybe.” Hildy looked as though she was about to start crying again.  

 

Mitt wished suddenly, more than anything, that he could do something to fix this rift that had grown up between them.  Later he thought he must have whispered Libby Beer’s lesser name, standing there with his hand still on Hildy’s shoulder, because he felt something pale green and growing, like vines unfurling under his hand.  He felt fragile tendrils curling under his palm and growing down through Hildy to somewhere dark and hard that, Mitt divined, had grown over like a callus over a splinter, to hide something tender and painful and small deep inside Hildy, and him too.  Mitt knew at once what it must be, because he had the same callused-over tenderness inside him, too. He felt the greenness travel through him too reaching the heart of the tenderness and breaking up the hard layers, and misting over the tender spot. Mitt felt the pain of that wound melt away, soothed by something cool and green.  When he opened his eyes he could see Hildy’s pale miserable face through a watery mist. 

 

Then Hildy turned all the way around and flung herself fiercely against Mitt’s chest.  It hurt rather, from the sheer force of it. But Mitt found he didn’t really mind. He slowly brought his arms up to hold Hildy there like that for a while.

 

He felt Hildy gulp.  “Oh, Mitt, I’m  _ sorry!  _ You didn’t deserve it.  I knew I was being unkind.  But I couldn’t seem to stop myself hating you for everything that went wrong.  I suppose it was easier to despise you than to admit to myself that I was miserable being away from all of you.”

 

“It’s been awful,” Mitt said hollowly, “knowing you despised me but not knowing why.”

 

“It wasn’t anything you did,” Hildy said miserably.  “It just me feeling awful, and blaming you for it. And the worst part was I  _ liked  _ you - and I didn’t want to anymore.  It was terrible to finally have you and father and Ynen and then not have any of you around at all. ”

 

Maybe it was the soothing green mist Mitt could feel deep inside him.  Maybe it was working. Mitt said hopefully, “So you’ll come with me, then?”  He felt Hildy laugh against his chest. 

 

“No, Mitt,” she said firmly.  “I do have my own plans. But give me a few years.  I’ll come when you really need me.”

 

“I need you now,” Mitt argued.

 

“No, you don’t,” said Hildy.  She pushed away and scrubbed hard at her face with one green-blue-white striped sleeve.  “Give my love to father. And come visit me in Ansdale. Biffa will be there,” she added meaningfully.  Mitt found himself blushing to his roots. 

 

Hildy’s eyes were red-rimmed, but she was smiling.  “I promise I’ll write,” she said. 

 

“Me, too,” said Mitt.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Edit: Don't know why every time I wrote Hildy autocorrect changed it to Hildry...why??  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
